Chess Folk

Your next rival. Your first brilliant move. Your own chess club.

Settle in for a friendly game, meet an opponent online, chase a tournament victory, or discover the ideas behind a famous masterpiece. Chess Folk brings together hundreds of fictional rivals, guided practice with Susu the Panda, historical adventures, and tools to help you understand your games.

Enjoy a chess club of your own—whether you’re learning your first tactics or returning for one more match.

Meet rivals you’ll remember

Discover more than 300 fictional opponents with portraits, nationalities, biographies, and playing styles. Challenge patient defenders, bold attackers, promising youngsters—and a rather formidable panda.

Find opponents by country, continent, or in-game rating. Save your favorites, revisit recent opponents, and turn a close defeat into your next rematch. Friendly animal opponents offer gentler starting points for children and beginners.

Take your chess online

Connect your Lichess account and meet real opponents without leaving Chess Folk’s familiar board.

Choose rated or casual matchmaking with 10-minute, 15+10, or 30-minute time controls. Follow the moves and captured pieces, use premoves, and play with mouse, keyboard, touch, or controller.

When the game ends, keep learning right here. Games completed through Chess Folk join your match history, ready to replay, export, or explore with Game Review. View your online ratings, results, and rating history, separately from your progress against computer opponents.

Online play is optional and requires a free Lichess account and an internet connection. Your offline chess club remains available without signing in.

Learn with Susu the Panda

Pull up a chair for an untimed practice game with Susu. Ask for hints, explore alternative moves, and retry a decision to see what changes. Choose guidance at key moments, after every move, or whenever you ask.

Build your understanding through guided lessons, chess puzzles, and the Opening Explorer. Put ideas into practice at your own pace, with help available when you need it.

Sharpen your eye for the board

Good chess often begins with noticing something simple: a free piece, a threat, or an exchange worth making.

Board Vision offers untimed practice in capturing unprotected pieces, saving attacked pieces, finding worthwhile exchanges, and creating threats. Use hints, retry your answers, and learn from explanations.

Quick Spot turns recognition into a short timed challenge. Find captures that win material, build your score, and track your personal bests. After the round, revisit missed positions without the pressure of a clock.

Ready for a greater challenge? Choose Attackers & defenders to practise exchanges and recaptures where the first capture doesn’t tell the whole story.

For a different kind of clock practice, Think & Move challenges you to find a good move within a time limit—then reflect on your decision.

Understand your games

Bring your completed online and offline games into Game Review. Explore an accuracy summary, mistakes, missed opportunities, and engine continuations using a full move list and convenient navigation controls.

Review how long you spent on decisions, revisit important positions, and continue playing from a position to try an idea yourself.

Opening insights helps you discover which openings you play most often and revisit early mistakes identified in saved reviews. Filter by color, time control, or recent games, then open the corresponding position in Opening Explorer to study further.

Step into chess history

Travel to Paris in 1858, Havana in 1921, and New York in 1956 through illustrated historical quests.

Meet the players, discover the setting, and take your place at the board for key moments from celebrated games. Find Paul Morphy’s attacking ideas, explore Capablanca’s precision, and tackle decisions from a thirteen-year-old Bobby Fischer’s remarkable encounter with Donald Byrne.

Each campaign combines storytelling with chess challenges, hints, and explanations that help you understand why the moves matter.

Compete for your next victory

Enter offline tournaments or create your own round-robin, Swiss-system, or knockout competition with up to 64 players.

Choose the field and time control, follow pairings and standings, and return to finish your tournament. Recurring events and illustrated venues bring variety to your calendar, with gentler competitions for newer players.

Track your in-game rating, climb the Chessfolk Club leagues, and build a record of memorable games. Separate local profiles let everyone keep their own chess journey.

Create your own chess rivals

Give a new opponent a name, portrait, biography, and personality. Choose a playing level, then shape their preferences, thinking habits, and opening preparation.

Start with a personality preset or adjust the settings yourself. Upload artwork, generate an avatar offline, and launch a test game directly from the editor.

Organize custom opponents into collections, share them, watch them compete, or include them in your own unrated tournaments. Custom opponents’ displayed strength is an estimate rather than an independently calibrated rating.

Create, collect, and share

Make Chess Folk your own with Steam Workshop:

Create and share custom AI opponent collections.

Design chess piece sets using your own artwork.

Build puzzle collections with the in-game position and solution editor.

Create board styles with custom colors, textures, and backgrounds.

Put together annotated game collections with commentary and alternative lines.

Create and share recorded chess-announcer voice packs.

Discover other players’ creations or exchange collections directly through files.

Find your favorite place to play

Choose a clear 2D board or a 3D view, then personalize the atmosphere with different pieces, boards, and scenery. Try warm woodgrain or a translucent Frosted Glass board, adjust background visibility, switch to a dark theme, and choose a comfortable text size.

Customize music, sound effects, clock warnings, and spoken announcements to suit your taste.

Earn Club Tokens through play and learning to unlock additional cosmetics. Tokens are earned in-game and are not sold for real money.

Play your way

For offline games, choose bullet, blitz, rapid, classical, or custom time controls, including increment, delay, and multi-period clocks.

Share the same computer for local two-player chess, work together against a computer opponent in Play Together, or sit back and watch computer rivals compete.

Use mouse, keyboard, or controller. Draw arrows and highlight squares to think through ideas, import and export PGN games, and set up positions whenever a move sparks your curiosity.

Computer matches and offline tournaments work without an internet connection. Online play and Workshop browsing and downloads require one.

There’s always another rival to meet, another idea to discover, and another reason to return to your chess club.

Chess Folk’s in-game ratings represent progress within the game and are not official federation ratings. Lichess ratings belong to that service and are tracked separately.

Chess Folk is an independent application and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Lichess.